During an interview in early August, CBS correspondent Errol Barnett asked presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden if he had taken a cognitive test. The former vice president bristled at the question, and compared it to the journalist being asked if he had taken a drug test.
BARNETT: Have you taken a cognitive test?
BIDEN: No, I haven’t taken a test. Why the hell would I take a test? Come on, man. That’s like saying, you, before you got in this program, if you take a test where you’re taking cocaine or not. What do you think, huh? Are you a junkie?
In the days following the interview, Biden’s reply has served as a kind of political Rorschach test. On one end, many commentators simply ignored the segment, while on the other, several prominent political pundits, writers, and social media figures have claimed or implied that Biden’s comment was somehow racist.
Here’s the problem – claiming that Biden’s “are you a junkie” remark was definitively racist is a contortionist interpretation of what occurred.
Because the former vice president’s alleged cognitive decline has been the subject of intense speculation over the course of the campaign, Barnett asked Biden if he had taken a test to verify his mental acuity. Biden didn’t take kindly to the question, and replied by comparing it to Barnett being asked to submit to a drug test for his job at CBS.
Biden asking Barnett if he was “a junkie” appears to have been part of the hypothetical that the former vice president set up in his prior remark about a drug test. There is no concrete indication that the comment was made because of Barnett’s race.
That didn’t stop certain individuals on the Right from running with the comment as yet another racially inappropriate remark from Joe Biden along the lines of his “you ain’t black” reply to Charlamagne tha God.
There are two possibilities as to why certain people used Biden’s comment as an weapon against him.
The first is blatant intellectual dishonesty. They know that a straightforward interpretation would neutralize the comment, which then wouldn’t allow them to use it as easy ammo against Biden. However, by implying that Biden’s comment was tinged with racism, they can link it to the candidate’s past inappropriate comments, and an uncritical audience will absorb it as gospel. This is something that the mainstream press frequently does with comments made by President Trump.
The second possibility as to why some on the Right are weaponizing Biden’s comment in this very particular way is because their perception has been warped by tribalism. It’s entirely possible that they don’t even see the straightforward interpretation of the former vice president’s remark; that their tribalist goggles have bent the “junkie” comment to fit within the framework of an already developed narrative built upon Biden’s other racial gaffes.
This comment, and the way in which it has been construed, might not seem like something on which we should focus, but it’s actually quite important as it illustrates in a very uncomplicated way how easily we can slip into poor behavior.
If we are unknowingly misinterpreting fairly unambiguous situations because the lens through which we view the word has been so acutely warped by tribalism, it’s likely a sign that we should take a step back and recalibrate our senses. If we are deliberately falsifying or twisting things to fit a preferred line of attack against our opponents, we are waging a war at the expense of the truth.
With a candidate as flawed as Joe Biden, there shouldn’t be – and isn’t – a need to paint a fabricated or distorted picture.
Are we not supposed to be the ones on the side of truth and reason? If we permit ourselves to sink into careless reporting, or worse, if we deliberately spin a deranged narrative in order to malign our opponent, we engage in the slow and steady forfeiture of our integrity to the corrupt machine of tribal politics.
Then we’re all the same.